Announcing the Fall 2017 EdSurge Independent Fellows
EdSurge Independent is excited to announce the Fall ’17 cohort of EdSurge Independent Fellows!
This impressive and diverse group consists of 14 students from 4 countries across 3 continents. Between them, they’ve started at least 7 education nonprofits and a handful of education businesses, have worked with some of the world’s most famous educational organizations, and have a dizzying breadth and depth of educational experiences. (This cohort is actually the most diverse we’ve had so far in terms of level of education — one of our Fellows is still in high school, and another is pursuing a PhD!)
Throughout the course of the semester, these Fellows will meet weekly to discuss some of the biggest trends and most pressing issues in higher education and beyond. They’ll meet with leading education experts, connect with mentors in the education space, and share their thoughts and perspectives with the readers of EdSurge Independent.
You can subscribe to our newsletter to receive content from the fellows here!
This community of students passionate about driving change in education will surely have a significant impact in the world in the years to come. Without any further ado, we’re pleased to introduce the Fall ’17 EdSurge Independent Fellows:
Lisa Truong
In the words of her mother, Lisa tries her best to “Do whatever feeds the fire in your soul and do it well.”
This advice has led her to live in China as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar to research green energy, debate upon Sino-American education policies with Peking and Tsinghua students on national Chinese television, and write ethnographies about Chinese language & culture; To spend a summer in the Pacific Northwest with NSF grants to research and later co-author a biological paper about intertidal wave forces and their effects on clingfish; To learn coding on the side and then join JPMorgan Chase as an application developer without a formal computer science degree. In her free time, she reads a lot of nonfiction and walks dogs.
At the heart of her varied interests is one goal, to learn and to help others learn. Lisa’s interesting on paper but what’s most memorable about her is a desire to serve and her understanding that a lot of luck and opportunity brought her to where she is today.
Bobby Yang
Bobby Yang is a self-taught software engineer who is going through a 2-year software engineering school to broaden his knowledge in all things computer related. He has been drawn to computers since he was a middle schooler, building his first site in 8th grade. Although he loves programming and engineering, at his core, Bobby cares most about people. He believes that technology is here to enable and empower people. Everything he works one is a part of has that vision. He hopes to see technology connect everyone in the world together.
Victor Zhang
Victor is passionate about transforming the education sector and creating the future. He is the Global Community Manager at Navitas Ventures and the Co-founder and Managing Director of Generation Entrepreneur.
Navitas Ventures is the venturing arm of Navitas, one of the worlds leading education companies. They partner with entrepreneurs and forward thinking teams around the world with a vision for better and smarter learning.
At the age of 16, Victor co-founded Generation Entrepreneur, a not-for-profit organisation empowering high school students through entrepreneurship to pursue their passions outside the classroom. He lead the growth of the organisation, built a team of 30 and raised funding from startups, corporates and the government to impact over 1500+ Australian students.
Last year, he was named a ‘Young Social Pioneer’ by the Foundation for Young Australians. He won the Education stream of the incubator program and grant funding from the UBS Foundation.
Currently, Victor is on hiatus as an exchange student at Cornell University. Originally, he is a student from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Larissa Moreira
Larissa Moreira is a 20-year-old social entrepreneur from Brazil, passionate about education and technology, currently in her sophomore year at Babson College. Daughter of a K-12 school teacher and a public school student herself, she learned in her early ages the numerous problems students and teachers face in the current educational system. Because of her curiosity, she ended up participating in a lot of extracurricular activities, even though Brazil has no such culture of learning outside of school. After living incredible experiences, she realized it was necessary to make sure Brazilian students had access to opportunities to explore their passions, create their network and be recognized for what they are good at. Larissa then cofounded InspiraSonho (inspire dream in Portuguese), which is an organization focused on providing an holistic educational experience to students through extracurricular activities. InspiraSonho has been recognized by Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative as an organization with high potential impact. You can learn more about InspiraSonho on its website (in Portuguese) or by following Larissa on Twitter.
Jane Zhang
Jane Zhang is the CEO and Co-founder of room2learn, the first online platform for designing learning spaces. Lately, she likes to think about how Earth might look, feel, and taste like in 50 years, and backcast to design learning experiences that can prepare us for the long term. With room2learn, Jane leads a team of educators, designers, and techies at the Harvard Innovation Lab to design 21st century learning spaces that work using data. As a former educator, Jane has worked with youth for over 10 years in a variety of environments, from leading eco camps in BC to teaching journalism in Hong Kong. Outside of education, she has worked as a journalist, urban planner, and in the clean technology sector. Jane holds a Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a B.A. & Sc. in Sustainability and English Literature from McGill University.
Heena Gulati
Heena Gulati is currently pursuing a Masters in Digital Media Design for Learning with a concentration in Games for Learning from New York University. Before coming to NYU, she was working as a Psychologist/Behavioral Trainer in India. She has also worked on several research projects in the field of Human Behavior, Positive Psychology and Cognitive Science. Heena is interested in working on designing innovative educational tools and games for children which makes learning an immersive experience for them instead of being a monotonous one. She also wants to work in the area of mental health by creating tools and technology which helps people with psychological issues to overcome the stigma/barrier and reach out for help.
Ben Alemu
Benyam Alemu is a Biochemistry & Cell Biology student with an Educational Studies minor at UC San Diego. He is an educator, undergraduate biomedical researcher and national nonprofit organization leader. Alemu is the Chief Operating Officer of SENDforC, which was ranked one of the top student-led initiatives in the country for “Building a Sustainable Community.” Alemu advises student and professional groups across the United States: including startups, scholarship funds, laboratory endeavors, K-12 educational programs, nonprofits, venture capital firms and higher education steering committees on social impact.
He has worked in 7 laboratories across UC San Diego and Harvard University. He also has done considerable work with the UCSD Department of Education Studies and human rights groups. Ben has joined the High Tech High Graduate School of Education in 2017 as the inaugural undergraduate student educator and researcher.
Contact Ben to discuss curriculum development and co-creating grassroots student-run volunteer initiatives.
Tien Mai
Tien is a Global Scholar class of 2020 at Babson College — a top ranked business school from Massachusetts and a #1 school for Entrepreneurship. Born and raised in a small area of Vietnam, she had been striving for 2 years to study abroad in the States. Tien cares deeply about equality in education and she is passionate about incorporating technology into addressing problems related to higher education. During her application process to US colleges, she realized an issue of inequality in access to education between students in public schools and those in private schools. With a dream of bringing equality to students, Tien founded SEEDS Vietnam — a non-profit organization focusing on education reform and youth empowerment in her country. She has been working with different students, businesses, organizations, and the Embassy to design and implement a one-year program in order to assist ambitious students from disadvantaged families to apply to US colleges. In near future, she wants the second project of SEEDS Vietnam to focus on the topic of coding for female students, hoping to educate young women on the power of technology in addressing social issues.
Krista Galleberg
Krista Galleberg is a senior studying Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. After she graduates, she plans to move back to her home state of California to earn a teaching credential/Masters in Teaching and become an elementary school teacher. She is the founder and lead organizer of AlignEd, an organization that connects college students across the country who are passionate about PK-12 education equity. For more information about her inspiration for this project you can read her blog post here. In addition to her passions for learning, teaching and building relationships, Krista loves yoga and dance, community-based system dynamics, and cooking/eating new foods. She is excited and grateful for the opportunity to think about education on a global scale with EdSurge Independent. You can follow her on Twitter @kristagalleberg.
Patrick Grady O’Malley
Patrick Grady O’Malley is currently pursuing his MA degree in Digital Media Design for Learning at New York University. After this degree is conferred, Patrick plans to enroll in another MA program in the Digital Humanities before applying to PhD programs in Comparative Literature. Patrick is wildly fascinated by Francophone Arabic literature. This is the literature that was written during and after the period of French colonialism throughout the Maghreb, or Western North Africa. Beyond the literature, Patrick is academically pursuing in what ways the Digital Humanities could be used to analyze linguistic patterns seen within Francophone Arabic literature. Since the largely Arabic speaking countries of the Maghreb absorbed a great deal of French influence during French colonialism, and modern mainland France has the largest Arab population in Europe, there seems to be a great deal to be said about what these cross-linguistic encounters have created. Digital data of literature can be used to create insight into better understanding this part of the world, and the many dynamic linguistic nuances within. Beyond these academic pursuits, Patrick lives in Connecticut, as city life did not agree with him and commuting has proven to be ideal.
Aditi Patil
Since middle school, Aditi felt instinctively that computer science was not for her–it was “too nerdy,” a “boy’s thing.” However, with encouragement from her guidance counselor, Aditi took an Introduction to Java Programming course as a freshman in high school. After her interest piqued in the subject, she enrolled in a coding camp at the Flatiron Academy in New York City. There, Aditi was amazed to learn about the wonderful lifestyle of a coder, excited to become a part of the computer science community, and shocked to hear about the large disparity between men and women in the field. Aditi founded a non-profit called XX Coders Club at her high school, where an enthusiastic group of young women meet regularly to support each other in their interest in computer science. Through XX Coders, she has been able to get more involved in her own community, creating a summer camp in 2017 for girls from Wyandanch and teaching children with special needs how to code. Outside of computer science, Aditi enjoys playing tennis, participates in Academic Team at her school, and is the STEM editor for her high school’s newspaper, the HSE Thunderbird. She has also conducted computer science research at Yale University. She hopes to continue her XX Coders pursuits throughout college and beyond as her love for computer science continues to grow.
Kristi Johns
After completing an undergraduate degree in genetics and biotechnology and a master’s degree in molecular biology from Brigham Young University, Kristi joined Teach For America teaching secondary science courses in the rural South. She then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she taught and designed genetics and biology courses for various colleges and universities. These experiences gave Kristi insights into the current challenges plaguing the education system, especially for marginalized students. Throughout her teaching career, she has sought to implement innovative practices into her classrooms to better meet the needs of students. Kristi is a member of the London Cohort of the Google Certified Innovator program and is working on a tool to support students to persevere through the challenges of higher education (check out “Fitbit for Higher Ed” on Youtube). She is currently a doctoral student at Arizona State University in Educational Leadership & Innovation, focusing on design thinking to build strong communities of practice within higher ed systems. In her spare time, Kristi likes to eat great food, explore new places, and hang out with her husband and two-year-old daughter.
Ben Weinstock
Ben is an American living in Israel, and has been serving his mandatory national service doing community organization in a turbulent neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. He’s spent the last year running a youth department that specializes in informal education — the development of values, morals and behaviors. He’s worked to create a safe and educational space for the youth, that serves as an alternative to the difficult realities that they face on a daily basis.
His primary focus throughout the year was creating new programs that could give the youth new experiences and teach them valuable skills. He managed to open a basketball team, an after school study center and send out an international delegation that gave two teenagers the chance to participate in an American summer camp, and go abroad for the first time.
Most of the youth that Ben worked with, come from families that have immigrated to Israel in the last 20 years, predominantly from Ethiopia. This has given him a thirst to help develop the educational system as a primary tool in integrating immigrants into their new societies.
Aside from education, he is passionate about sports, music and literature and hope to be a published author one day.
Alyssa Foley
Alyssa Foley is a lot of firsts. The first time she enrolled at a school was as a college student. After being homeschooled K-12, she attended a public community college; a small, private, religiously-affiliated university and a large public university. Navigating different institutions as a first-generation college student gives her a unique perspective on higher education.
During her first semester at Houston Community College, she became the first editor-in-chief of the student newspaper after a publishing hiatus. She focused on how decisions made by the college’s administration and student government affect the lives of students. While attending the private University of St. Thomas in Houston, she created a news website reporting on the university administration. Now she attends the University of Houston and writes for the student newspaper, reporting on how policies and decisions at all levels of government affect students’ education.
She gained an insight into higher education policy and the importance of young people having a voice in policymaking during a fellowship with the non-profit Young Invincibles in Washington, DC. Alyssa is also a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and was named to the Texas Region Member Hall of Honor.
Noah Adelstein (Cohort Leader)
Noah Adelstein is a college student passionate about learning and helping others find what lights their fire through formal and informal education. He grew up in Denver, CO and is currently a junior at Washington University in St. Louis studying Economics and Computer Science. He has worked on digital marketing/growth for a variety of early-stage companies including Stackup, Siftery and TopOPPS. He is also an avid sports fan, playing soccer, skiing, snowboarding and owning a baseball blog about the St. Louis Cardinals called Cardsblog. You can learn more about Noah here or by reading his work on Medium.
Jared Silver (Cohort Leader)
Jared’s mission in life is to help foster a human capital revolution through education technology. After receiving multiple offers from respected education technology companies, Jared dropped out of Babson College after three semesters to pursue this mission as a software developer at Quill.org (a literacy nonprofit serving over 550,000 students and backed by organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, AT&T Foundation, and Google.org).
He also volunteers as the Strategic Partnerships Lead at the Oppia Foundation, an edtech nonprofit that originated as a 20% project at Google. Jared has served as a learning advisor at Codecademy, a software intern at Higher Learning Technologies, and founder of Same Classes (a web platform that alleviates student anxiety by connecting thousands of incoming students with others in similar classes).
Jared is a TEDx speaker and a writer, and his work has been published in the New York Observer, Startup Grind, and on the front page of Medium. You can learn more about Jared’s work and mission by following him on Twitter or reading his work on Medium.
In addition to sharing this incredibly impressive group of Fellows, we’re excited to announce the launch of the EdSurge Independent newsletter. Once a month, we’ll share the best insights and perspectives from some of the most passionate and insightful student minds rethinking the future of education.
Whether you’re an educator/administrator who wants to better understand and serve your students, an entrepreneur/technologist who wants insights directly from potential users, or a student who cares deeply about education and wants to be a part of the movement to transform its future, subscribe today to the EdSurge Independent newsletter.
